A two-metre wingspan becomes very real when the bird attached to it poops on your head. That's the kind of hard-earned field knowledge Ben Duncan Angee brings to his work — 30 years of guiding travellers around Sabah, the Malaysian state on Borneo that he calls home. He's now fronting Intrepid's new Borneo Premium Family Holiday, a nine-day trip built for families with kids aged five to 17.

The itinerary packs in a solid spread of the island's highlights. Families plant coral off tropical Gaya Island, cruise the tangled oxbow bends of the Kinabatangan River looking for wildlife, and meet semi-wild orangutans at the Sepilok reserve. A visit to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre — home to roughly 60 to 80 orphaned or injured apes that roam protected rainforest with twice-daily public feedings — comes paired with the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre just across the road.

The wildlife headline act is the so-called Borneo Big Five: proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants, saltwater crocodiles, rhinoceros hornbills and orangutans. Spotting wild orangutans is genuinely tough even for veterans like Ben, since the apes sit high in the canopy and freeze when they notice people. His tip: scan for their exposed nests first — old nests signal a good chance there's an orangutan nearby, and any movement up in the leaves confirms it.

Ben's approach with kids is deliberately low-key. He feeds them facts in bite-sized pieces so they absorb them, a habit he credits to his own late fatherhood — his son was born premature at seven months, and Ben calls being a dad one of the greatest gifts of his life. Since he only has the one child, he treats the teenagers and youngsters on his tours as a surrogate family. He tells a story about a group where older teens instinctively looked after a six-year-old, mirroring silver-leaf langur monkeys, whose newborns are born bright maroon precisely so the whole troop can keep an eye on them.

There's a conservation thread running through it all. Ben is candid that habitat loss from palm-oil plantations, logging and infrastructure, plus the illegal pet trade, is squeezing Borneo's wildlife hard. His argument for family trips is simple: today's kids are tomorrow's decision-makers, and teaching them on the ground beats any classroom lecture.

For families weighing up the trip, the appeal is having a local leader who knows where to look, when to wait, and how to keep children engaged through long river cruises and humid jungle walks. Borneo rewards exactly that kind of patience — the sightings that stick with you, from a mother orangutan dangling with her baby near Gomantong caves to a rare lesser adjutant stork overhead, tend to come to those who know the signs. Kids who like animals, mud and stories with gross punchlines will be in their element.

Story reported by the Intrepid Travel Blog.